


good clean fun

by kitseybarbours



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Depersonalization, Dirty Talk, Grief/Mourning, Implied Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Pre-Canon, Rough Sex, Switch Elias Bouchard, Switch Tim Stoker, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, compulsion kink, implied mental manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:55:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26688535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/pseuds/kitseybarbours
Summary: It’s better, Tim knows, not to ask. When he staggers into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face and clean up the mess between his thighs, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and thinks,Danny.The voice in his head is Elias’.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Tim Stoker
Comments: 22
Kudos: 66





	good clean fun

* * *

Six months since Danny died and Tim still wakes up screaming.

It’s easier, he finds, not to try and sleep at all; to fill the dreaded late-night hours with booze and clubs and bodies instead, music loud enough to drown out the imagined sound of his brother’s last words. He lets himself be taken home by someone new each night and tries to lose himself in them. Thus far, it hasn’t worked.

Tonight starts out no different. Tim’s strayed from his usual haunt, bored by the same crowds and the same noise. He’s fucked everyone who’s ever so much as eyed him there already, and now their gazes slide past him, skittish. They can tell, now, that what he’s looking for isn’t easily found. His hunger for it has begun to scare them.

So tonight he is somewhere new. The clientele here is older than he’s used to, and Tim feels like he stands out—although not necessarily in a bad way. The place is dimly lit, with a vaguely Art Deco vibe, full of half-shadowed tables set in intimate nooks, but Tim senses interested gazes following him (tight jeans, shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest) as he makes his way from the door to the bar. _Good,_ he thinks; he’s craving a fix, and soon.

He orders his first drink, downs it quickly, impatient to get drunk. He’s needed this, badly, all day.

Up to now, the publishing house has been patient with him. When his mother and stepmum wanted to postpone the funeral so they could fly up from Porto, his boss let him extend his bereavement leave. When he couldn’t bring himself to come in for another few days after that, she said nothing, offered only a sympathetic smile. His co-workers have all been quiet and careful when he turns up two hours late, eyes bleary and feet dragging, barely having forced himself to get out of bed. There have been consolatory flowers and kind notes left on his desk, a plate or two of homemade biscuits, offers of phone calls or coffee or dinner, and even—a few months in—a handful of discreet recommendations to trusted therapists.

Tim has brushed them off, often rudely, and suffered no repercussions for it: the kind of free pass granted only by a horrific death in the family. But today, it seems, he reached a limit. His boss called him into her office and spoke to him sharply, abandoning the bubble-wrapped tone everyone has taken with him since it happened, and told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to get his shit together or else she’d have to ask him to leave. _It’s getting excessive, Tim,_ she told him. _At some point you need to start moving on._

‘I’d love to,’ he’d snapped, and left her office with the strong sense he would not be returning. But that’s the thing, though, isn’t it: he doesn’t want to move on; he can’t. He cannot imagine a future in which he doesn’t see Danny’s face every time he closes his eyes. He’s not sure he wants to.

The alternative is forgetting, and that would be unbearable.

So he continues. The bars, the drinks, the sex; without thought, without precaution, without limit. He doesn’t know if he wants to feel something or nothing.

His drink is empty. When he sets it down, there’s a fresh one on the bar before him: something new, not what he had before. Tim frowns at the bartender. ‘I didn’t order this.’

The bartender—dressed in waistcoat and tie, with an actual cloth napkin folded over his arm—raises his eyebrows. ‘The gentleman sent it over.’ He points his chin down the bar, into the shadows.

Tim follows his gaze. As if on cue, a man emerges, stirring his martini with a toothpick full of olives. ‘Good evening,’ he says, in a smooth, mannered tone. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me for being so forward.’

Tim picks up the fresh drink and inspects it. Gin-based, by the smell, but it’s palest blue and shimmering, opalescent. Fucking posh bars and their fucking craft cocktails. Tim decides he doesn’t care what’s in it, and takes a swig. ‘Mm,’ he says, wiping his lips. ‘Forgiven.’

The man gives a polite laugh. Long fingers rest on the back of the barstool next to Tim’s. ‘May I?’ At Tim’s nod, he sits, levering a lean, trim body into the seat. He’s not tall, Tim notes with faint amusement, but he carries himself with dignified grace and an obvious self-assurance. _Money,_ Tim thinks, seeing the flash of a small jewel at his French-cuffed wrist as he brings the martini to his lips.

He’s older than Tim, which doesn’t surprise him: dark hair going attractively silver, fine lines around his keen green eyes. He is perfectly clean-shaven, his sharp chin accented by a pristinely starched collar. His trousers are—yes, somehow Tim knew—pin-striped. He looks like he came with the building, a Leyendecker painting come to life. Tim has always liked history.

‘You’re here alone?’ the stranger asks, as though he hadn’t been watching him long enough to ascertain as much. But these kinds of interactions have a script, one Tim has been too impatient to follow for months now—usually he’s more inclined to skip to the good part, the part where he’s on his knees in a bathroom stall forgetting his own name. He can already sense that’s not this guy’s style.

‘Sure am,’ Tim replies, taking another sip. ‘You, too?’

‘Quite.’ The man extends a hand. ‘Elias. And you are?’

‘Tim.’ Usually he gives a fake name—he’s given Danny’s, sometimes, for reasons he doesn’t want to consider—but tonight his own comes out, unbidden.

‘Tim,’ Elias repeats. ‘A pleasure.’ And instead of shaking Tim’s proffered hand, he brings it to his lips and brushes to its knuckles the lightest of kisses. 

‘Smooth,’ Tim says. ‘You’ve done this before.’

‘Perhaps,’ Elias admits, smiling lightly. ‘And you haven’t?’

‘Touché.’

They drink. ‘What do you do, Tim?’ Elias asks him, turning the stem of his glass between his fingertips. The olives catch the light: fat, green, glistening like winking eyes.

‘I’m in publishing,’ Tim says. He doesn’t lie about this, if anyone bothers to ask; he’s proud of it. _Or I was._ ‘Or, well, maybe not anymore. I think I got fired today.’

‘You _think?’_

‘Yeah.’ Despite himself, Tim colours. ‘I, ah…I’ve kinda been slacking for the last few months. The last, uh, six months. And I think my boss finally got fed-up.’ He shrugs. ‘Don’t really care, though. Hasn’t really sunk in.’

‘Six months,’ says Elias, his brow creasing in concern. ‘Did something happen?’

‘My brother was murdered.’

Again, the words leave Tim’s lips without his permission. This is his one rule, the one thing he never, never tells; not even those few people he’s gone home with more than once know about it, nor would he tell them if they ever asked. And yet here he is with this man he’s known for five minutes, vomiting up the ugly truth.

He grabs his drink hard and takes a swig. ‘Sorry. That was—blunt.’

‘It was honest,’ Elias corrects him. He hasn’t recoiled, his face hasn’t shuttered; he remains neutral, even sympathetic. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. It’s perfectly understandable that such an event would affect your performance. At work, that is.’ The barest glint of a smile as he lifts the toothpick to his lips and extracts one olive with straight, sharp teeth.

Tim is glad to take the bait and divert the line of questioning. ‘I can tell you for sure that my performance in…other areas…hasn’t been affected.’ It’s not his smoothest line, but it gets them closer to the point. The hunger has reawoken and claws now at his gut.

‘Mm. Is that so?’ Elias leans closer to him—musk and vetiver—and says, soft, in his ear, ‘Would you like to show me?’

‘Yes,’ says Tim. The raw need in his voice is a shock. If Elias asked him to, he knows at once, Tim would drop to his knees at his feet and beg.

Elias does no such thing—at least not yet. He only smiles, and cocks his head to the door. ‘Shall we?’

* * *

The _crack_ of Elias’ cheekbone against the granite countertop is far more satisfying than it should be. Tim keeps him pinned there with one hand to the back of his neck as he reaches down to unzip his jeans and pull his cock out of his boxers. They’re both breathing hard—teeth and bruises in the cab to Chelsea—and Tim is impatient to get inside of him. He fumbles at Elias’ belt and shoves his trousers down, exhaling harshly when he sees Elias give a delicate shiver.

He finds Elias’ mouth and presses fingers in. Elias sucks needily, his tongue soft and hot around them; Tim reaches deeper, smirking when he feels him gag. He pulls his hand back roughly and begins to finger him open—hasty, un-careful. Elias shifts and whines but does not plead. When Tim replaces his fingers with the blunt wet head of his cock, he gives a low wanton moan and spreads his legs wider still.

If he’s honest, Tim hadn’t expected this. For all of Elias’ polished charm, there is an edge to him, a glint of danger like a blade held to the light. Tim had fully anticipated being forced to his knees, perhaps with one polished brogue between his legs, pinning him down to gag on Elias’ cock. He’d been looking forward to it, even.

But as soon as the door to the Georgian townhouse had shut behind them, Tim had pressed Elias up against it, digging his knee between his thighs. He’d been taunting him, provoking, seeing how far he could go before he was punished for it—but instead, Elias had arched against him with a silken moan. ‘You’ll take me, won’t you?’ he’d murmured into Tim’s neck; and Tim found he had no answer but a growling _‘Yes.’_

‘Go on,’ Elias urges him now, low and breathless. ‘Fuck me.’

‘You don’t tell me what to do.’ And Tim slaps him, open-handed against the firm, pale flesh of his arse. Elias cries out, his handsome face pressed hard into the countertop, an ecstatic smile forming on his lips. Tim feels a sneer of twisted pleasure contorting his own features as he pushes inside of him.

By now, he’s not surprised that Elias isn’t virgin-tight: he’s obviously done this before, this is obviously what he likes. (Tim should have known; it’s always those uptight managerial types, isn’t it, and the posher the better.) But it’s been a damn long while since Tim has topped anyone, and he is shocked by how good it still feels, that close vicious heat.

Elias is writhing around him, pushing himself back to take more of Tim’s cock, and Tim grips his slim hips with both hands. ‘You are a slut, aren’t you?’ he says carelessly. ‘You’ll take whatever I give you.’

‘Please,’ gasps Elias at once, ‘oh, more, please, more. Fuck me. _Harder,_ please.’

Even like this, even desperate and needy and completely at Tim’s mercy, there is power to him: there is something about him to which Tim cannot say no. Almost against his will his hips drive forward and he thrusts deep, deeper, bottoming out and loosing a long, thready moan from Elias’ lips. _‘Yes,’_ Elias exhales, as though he has won; ‘oh, _yes.’_

‘Are you gonna come like this?’ Tim asks roughly. ‘Haven’t even touched you. Just gonna come on my cock like the filthy slut you are, huh?’

He likes this, he must; he clenches sharply around Tim, his breaths short and fast, and the renewed pressure makes Tim curse. He wonders hazily if he’s been too cocky after all, but the way Elias is moving against him makes it difficult to care. ‘Make me come,’ Elias gasps, white-knuckled, and is it a plea or a command?

_You’ll come when I say you can,_ is what Tim wants to say, but the words that leave his mouth are ‘Yes, _yes,_ come for me, come for me now.’ Is this voice his own? He hardly has time to wonder before Elias gives a low, sharp cry and spasms around him. His climax draws Tim’s own from him: before he knows it he is spilling himself into the tight punishing heat.

_‘Fuck,’_ says Tim, in the suspended moment after. Elias has braced himself on his forearms and he is trembling, not with weakness but with an energy almost electric. His lean chest heaves, and the faint aftershocks that pulse around Tim’s cock make him shudder. He pulls out, ungracefully, and watches mesmerised the drip of his own come down Elias’ fine-haired thighs.

‘Good,’ murmurs Elias, muffled against the countertop, and then he raises his head and turns to look at Tim. His green eyes blaze with a dark light. ‘Good,’ he says again. Supplely he moves, buttoning his trousers, straightening his shirt: if not for the way his hair, mussed free of its styling, falls across his high forehead, he might not just have been fucked at all. His total re-composure is unnerving. Without thinking Tim takes a step back.

‘Oh, come now,’ says Elias, and stretches out a hand. He is smiling with white teeth. ‘Did you think I had finished with you already?’

* * *

A big bed, and silk sheets, in a tasteful shade of navy blue. Antique wooden floors polished to a deadly shine. A marble hearth, above which hangs an oil portrait: the light is dim, but the subject is shockingly familiar—Tim has never seen such a family resemblance across centuries before. Subtle opulence, all of it, mannered Old-World wealth; none of this is surprising.

What _does_ surprise him is the violent efficiency with which Elias sets about taking him apart.

He had hardly undressed, before, but as soon as they pass the bedroom’s threshold Elias tells him, ‘Strip.’ His voice is commanding now, with none of the honeyed need of the kitchen. Once again, Tim finds himself complying without a second thought.

Naked, he looks at Elias. ‘How do you want me?’

The answer seems to echo in his head even before Elias speaks. ‘On the bed. All fours.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Tim mutters without thinking, and before he knows it he is putting himself on display. His arse is in the air, his face pressed into the pillow. He smells Elias’ cologne on the sheets, but there is something else there, too: a scent like salt and charcoal, wind off the winter sea. In his eye-line lies a greying blond hair, much longer than Elias’, poised on the pillowcase as though on purpose.

It wouldn’t be the first time one of his fixes has been off the market. Once, Tim would have cared.

Now, though, he has been reduced to need, selfish and all-consuming. He finds with a delayed surprise that he is hard again—and when Elias has undressed and joins him on the bed, pressing his lithe form over Tim’s, he can feel that he, too, is once more erect. Perhaps after all he is younger than he looks.

Elias kisses his way up Tim’s spine, his neck, nipping at his nape and jaw. Tim strains against him, wanting bruises, wanting marks, but Elias is primly restrained: ‘Now, now,’ he murmurs. ‘Do you want to be owned so badly? Is that what you’ve been looking for?’

‘Yes,’ Tim breathes, although—had you asked him before just now—he would never have named his nameless hunger so. But Elias’ words fill him with certainty, that haughty, strangely soothing tone. Of course Elias knows what he wants. He has always known, hasn’t he? And he always will.

‘Mm. You want my cock inside you, don’t you?’ Elias continues, rubbing himself between Tim’s thighs, teasing at his entrance, pulling back if Tim starts to respond with too much eagerness. His cock is slick and cool with lube, and the slightest touch makes Tim shiver.

Tim nods vigorously, a low whine escaping him. Elias’ hand in his hair, at once, jerking his head back: ‘Say it.’

‘I want you,’ Tim gasps. He has never wanted anything like he wants this. No words are enough. ‘I want your cock inside me. Fuck me, Elias, please fuck me. I’ll be so good for you.’

‘Yes,’ says Elias indifferently, ‘you will.’

With no further warning he thrusts inside of him. Tim gives an undignified cry—the searing stretch, no preparation—but it turns quickly to a moan of lust when Elias grips his cock. Elias gives him a few hard, smooth strokes, letting him adjust as he settles himself inside of him; but then he sits up on his knees and lets go of Tim’s swollen cock in order to take him firmly by the hips.

He pushes farther still inside him, until Tim can feel the rasp of pubic hair against his skin, until the stretch has gone past the point of pleasant fullness and is approaching pain—surely he has taken bigger, but nothing has ever felt this _deep—_ he is about to cry out, to beg him to stop, when Elias pulls back again, leaving him bereft. Tim gasps. Empty hurts much more than full.

‘Fuck me,’ he begs, and his voice is a feeble thread. He wriggles, desperate, needing to be filled: ‘Fuck me, _please!’_

‘Needy slut.’ Elias snaps his hips and Tim chokes on a moan. Elias takes his hands off Tim’s waist, leaving him to fuck himself on Elias’ cock, chasing pressure and fullness that are almost, almost, but never quite enough. Tim hears himself whining. His thighs are burning as he shoves his weight back, back, spearing himself on Elias’ cock, but he will not stop. He can’t.

Suddenly he feels something cold and smooth touch the skin of his back, laid flat against his spine, and he stills, confused. ‘What—?’

‘Did I tell you to stop?’ Elias’ voice is languid, supremely unconcerned. Tim hears the scratch of a match being lit and then a soft, satisfied exhale; his nose prickles at the scent of tobacco smoke. It clicks into place.

‘Is there an _ashtray_ on my back?’ he musters the strength to ask.

‘That’s none of your concern.’ Elias thrusts hard into him and Tim’s elbows bow, bringing him to his forearms with a moan. Elias picks up his speed again until it’s punishing, hitting Tim’s prostate so hard it hurts. He’s fucking him, yes, but it’s not _him._

All at once Tim is keenly aware that he is being used, he is nothing more than a hole to be filled, Elias would be doing exactly the same thing to anyone who landed arse-up in his bed. Tim doesn’t matter. Tim is nothing, is no one, to Elias or to anyone; these thoughts fill his head like sweet crooning whispers, he breathes them in with Elias’ smoke.

Tim wants more. He wants Elias to say it aloud— _You are nothing, you mean nothing—_ because then it will be true. If he is nothing, he cannot feel. If he is nothing, he cannot grieve.

Elias seems to read his mind. He drapes himself over Tim’s back with sinuous grace, bringing his lit cigarette so close to Tim’s skin that he can feel its heat, prickling the hairs at the back of his neck. Ash falls, gentle as a kiss.

‘You’re pathetic,’ Elias whispers. ‘Your life is empty now, isn’t it? Nothing makes you happy. You never feel loved; you don’t even remember what it’s like. You couldn’t even keep that shiny job that made you feel so superior. And your brother is gone, Tim. Danny’s dead and he is never coming back.’

‘Danny,’ Tim repeats, the name searing through him. Distantly he realises he is crying. _‘Danny.’_

For the first time Tim wonders if he is going to die here. No one would look for him if he did.

‘That’s right,’ croons Elias, as though reading his mind. ‘You have nothing. You _are_ nothing.’

The relief takes his breath away. He is nothing; he feels it, he knows it; it overwhelms him like a possession, like absolution. _This. This._ At long last, he has found what he hungers for.

As his orgasm overtakes him, he is dimly aware that he never gave Elias his brother’s name. The cold shock of fear is swept away by his climax, a long, roaring wave that breaks over his head and drags him shaking to shore.

* * *

It’s better, Tim knows, not to ask. When he staggers into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face and clean up the mess between his thighs, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and thinks, _Danny._ The voice in his head is Elias’.

He does not ask. Nor does he ask about the blond hair on the pillow, or the second dressing-gown hanging on the bathroom door—warmer, bulkier than the brocaded silk one, opulent and impractical and clearly belonging to Elias. (The monogram on the pocket reads _JM._ Tim chalks it up to the occupational hazards of collecting antique clothing; it certainly looks old enough.)

Instead, he slinks back to bed, shivering but unwilling either to put on his own soiled clothes or to ask Elias for something to change into. Elias sits reclined against the headboard, naked, smoking. When Tim clambers back up into bed, maintaining a careful distance, he opens a burnished gold case (those initials again, or is Tim only imagining things?), lights a second cigarette from the flame of his own, and hands it to Tim without a word. He hasn’t smoked since uni; he sucks at it now like a dying man.

‘I never asked,’ says Tim, after a few minutes’ silence. ‘What do you do?’

‘I’m an academic at heart,’ says Elias. ‘A collector, really; a collector of knowledge.’ His tone is once again the cultured drawl, _soigné et charmant,_ with which he’d introduced himself at the bar, but now Tim has seen the cold steel that lies just beneath. (No, he corrects: Elias has _let_ him see it, and he will not let him forget that it is there.)

‘Do you—teach, then?’ asks Tim, surprised once again. He hadn’t thought professors made this kind of money.

Elias laughs, light and cold. ‘No. Once I thought I might, but my circumstances rather…changed.’ He takes a long drag and blows out a thin, elegant column of smoke. ‘Now I manage a small organisation dedicated to the pursuit of the esoteric. The Magnus Institute—perhaps you’ve heard of it?’

Tim shakes his head. ‘Can’t say I have.’

‘Shame,’ says Elias. He reaches across the bed and, with a familiarity that startles him, wraps long, cool fingers around Tim’s wrist. His thumb traces the shallow channel between Tim’s veins. ‘As it happens, I’m looking for new blood.’

‘Oh?’ Exhausted and unsettled and fucked-out as he is, Tim can’t help but speculate as to what kind of _blood_ Elias is after. Foolish visions of sitting in an office somewhere, tied up or plugged up and waiting idle until Elias wants him, drift snowlike through his head. His pulse quickens. He wonders if Elias can feel it.

‘You have research experience,’ states Elias, as though Tim had told him.

Tim does. He nods. ‘I have a first from Trinity. English lit.’

‘And…nothing else? No other jobs lined up?’ Elias waits for Tim to shake his head, though he surely knows the answer. ‘And no dependents, I presume,’ he murmurs. ‘We can’t pay our researchers as much as they deserve.’

In these surroundings, this seems rather a cruel joke, but then Tim recalls the second bathrobe; his ring finger is bare, but this does not mean Elias hasn’t married into money. It doesn’t matter anyway. ‘No dependents,’ Tim repeats. ‘I’ve got no one.’ He flushes slightly at being made to say it, as though Elias hadn’t whispered the same sweet poison into his ear to make him come screaming.

‘Good,’ says Elias, and he fixes him with that same clear, unblinking gaze. ‘How would you like a job?’

By the way Elias smiles, Tim can tell he has heard his answer before he knows it himself.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Title from my #1 Tim Stoker Anthem™, [Good Clean Fun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTTXiTj-hI) by the Kaiser Chiefs. Thank you to [bluebacchus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebacchus/pseuds/bluebacchus) for the song, for the ashtray bit, and for letting me be an Eliasfucker in our house where we live. 💘
> 
> I'm on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/saintmontague)!


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